Content

Office 365

Applies to: Office 365

Topic Last Modified: 2018-06-13

SharePoint Online is a collection of Web-based tools and technologies that help your organization store, share, and manage digital information. Built on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013, this hosted service is ideal for working on projects, storing data and documents in a central location, and sharing information with others. The following Content features makes Enterprise Content Management (ECM) easy for everyone. It’s the combination of traditional content management, social capabilities, and powerful search.

Most SharePoint user interface (UI) elements, such as links, form controls, and buttons are designed to use Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA). MSA enables people with disabilities to interact with content by using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader. Learn more about Accessibility features.

SharePoint Online site collection administrators can use the audit feature to track which users have taken what actions on the sites, content types, lists, libraries, lit items, and library files of site collections. Learn more about configuring audit settings for a site collection.

SharePoint Online site collection administrators can use the audit feature to track which users have taken what actions on the sites, content types, lists, libraries, and list items of site collections. Learn more about configuring audit settings for a site collection.

The Content Organizer acts as a gatekeeper for documents. You can automatically manage some important library tasks, such as managing folder sizes and routing documents to different libraries or folders. This not only saves time, but can help make sure that a document library is managed consistently. Learn more about Content Organizer.

Only available for Private Site Collections. Cross-site publishing is a publishing method. It lets you create and maintain content in one or more authoring site collections and publish that content across one or more publishing site collections using Search Web Parts. Learn how to activate the Cross-Site Publishing feature.

Design Manager lets organizations change master pages, page layouts, mobile views, and more. This feature is especially useful for advanced site design and branding to your public-facing website or your internal site collection or portal. Learn more about site development.

Document sets let users store, act on, export, and add a description to multiple files as a single entity. Policies, tagging, and templates can be applied to any document set that is created. Learn more about Document Sets.

eDiscovery search allows users to search for electronically stored information (ESI) that can be used as evidence for compliance and litigation support. Searchable content includes structured content, like documents and list items, as well as blogs, wikis, newsfeeds, and content in Exchange mailboxes. To be discoverable, content must be indexed by search. For more information, see Create and run eDiscovery queries.

Applying a hold means preserving a copy of the original content in case it’s modified or deleted by a user. Holds can be placed on content in SharePoint sites (including OneDrive for Business sites) and in Exchange mailboxes (including archived Skype for Business conversations). A hold is used to retain the content in its original form at the time when the hold is applied. When users apply a hold to a site or mailbox, the content remains in-place in its original location. For more information, see Add content to an eDiscovery case and place sources on hold.

When users are ready to deliver eDiscovery content to an authority or want to work on it with another legal program, they can export content from the eDiscovery Center. When content is exported, it’s delivered in a standard EDRM format that can be used by other eDiscovery programs. An Electronic Discovery Reference Model XML manifest is included with the search results to provide metadata about the exported items. For more information, see Export eDiscovery content and create reports.

If your organization performs work that involves sharing documents or collaborating directly with vendors, clients, or customers, then you might want to use one or more of your SharePoint Online sites to share content with people outside your organization who do not have licenses for your organization’s Microsoft Office 365 subscription. When a site is shared in SharePoint Online, an email message is sent to the external user containing the invitation to join the site. Invitations can be sent to people with any type of email address, such as user@gmail.com, user@contoso.com, or user@Comcast.net. External users sign in to the shared site via a one-time association of their email address with a Microsoft account. Learn more about external sharing.

Site users can generate a Guest Link (an anonymous link to a document) to share documents stored in SharePoint Online with external users without requiring the external user to sign in. Site users can create a Guest Link right from where the document is stored, such as in OneDrive for Business or a team site library, by using the “Get a link” button. Learn more about sharing a site with external users.

Faceted navigation help users browser for content more easily by filtering on refiners that are tied to terms in a term set. By using faceted navigation, SharePoint Server 2013 administrators can configure different refiners for different terms in a term set without having to create additional pages. Only authenticated SharePoint Online users can access private site collections with faceted navigation.

Users can sync a SharePoint library to their computers, and then work with those files in the library by using File Explorer. Updates to files sync to SharePoint when users are online. OneDrive for Business or a document library on a team site can be synched. Learn more about syncing a library to your computer.

Metadata management provides multiple taxonomies and folksonomies from a tenant-level store service that can be consumed at the site collection level. Metadata fields can even be embedded in documents. Learn more about managed metadata.

Metadata-driven navigation makes it easier to discover content in large lists and libraries. User tagging incentives are introduced and offer anticipatory suggestions of appropriate metadata based on location and context. Learn more about setting up metadata navigation.

Retentions policies can have multiple stages, allowing you to specify the entire document lifecycle as one policy. For example, review contracts every year, and delete after seven years. Learn more about storing and managing records.

If you’re an Office 365 customer, then you can automatically create and edit Office files using Office Online from an Internet browser. To learn which features are available in Office Online, see Office Online Service Description.

Not applicable to SharePoint Online customers. In SharePoint Server 2010, Office Web Apps is a SharePoint service application. For SharePoint Server 2013, there is a new Office server product, Office Web Apps Server. A single Office Web Apps Server farm can support users who access Office files through SharePoint Server 2013, Exchange Server 2013, shared folders, and websites. This lets you deploy and manage the online version of Office in an on-premises environment. Learn more about Office Web Apps Server Integration.

Content that is placed on hold is preserved, but users can still change it. The state of the content at the time of preservation is recorded. If a user changes the content or even deletes it, the item is retained at the time of deletion and the original, preserved version is still available. Learn more about placing content sources on hold.

The Analytics Processing Component helps administrators identify and surface content that users consider to be the most useful and relevant. The component analyzes both the content itself (Search analytics), and also the way users interact with it (Usage analytics). The results from the analysis are added to the items in the search index so that search relevance improves automatically over time. Also, the results are used in reports that help search administrators see which manual steps they can take to improve the search system. Learn more about analytics processing in SharePoint Server 2013.

Quick Edit, formerly known as Datasheet View, allows you to simply and quickly edit items inline on a SharePoint list. Quick Edit can be helpful if you have to edit many items in a list or library at the same time from within a grid, similar to a spreadsheet. Learn more about editing list items.

SharePoint users have a Recycle Bin where deleted content is stored. They can access the Recycle Bin to recover deleted documents and lists, if they need to. Items in the Recycle Bin are retained for 90 days. The following data types are captured by the Recycle Bin:

Site collections

Sites

Lists

Libraries

Folders

List items

Documents

Web Part pages

Site customizations made through SharePoint Designer are not captured by the Recycle Bin.

Only available for Private Site Collections. Search web parts help you render search results on SharePoint web pages. There are several search driven web parts, including Content Search, Catalog-Item Reuse, Items Matching a Tag, Pages, Pictures, Popular Items, Recently Changed Items, Recommended Items, Videos, Web Pages, and Wiki pages. The Content Search Web Part (CSWP) uses search technology to display content. When visitors browse to a page that contains a CSWP, the Web Part automatically issues a query and the search results are displayed within the CSWP. In most cases, visitors won't even know that search technology is being used to display the content they're viewing. To them, it will look and feel like any other webpage. Learn how to configure the Content Search Web Part.

To share content types among site collections, you make on content type gallery the “hub” of a managed metadata service, create connections to the service from each web application that contains a site collection, and specify that site collections should use the content types in the service. Learn more about sharing term sets and content types in SharePoint Server 2013.

A site mailbox is a shared inbox in Exchange Online that members of a SharePoint Online site can access. It is implemented in SharePoint Online as an app. You need both Exchange Online and SharePoint Online to read, organize, reply to, or delete mail from a site mailbox in SharePoint.

The unique Document ID services improves the managing and tracking of information by assigning a unique, human-readable identifier to every piece of content, making it easier to locate, even if the content was moved from its original location. Learn more about Document IDs.

Optimizing a public website for search is very important to connecting with new and returning customers. SharePoint Online includes built-in SEO features, such as customizable robots.txt and page-level metatagging so organizations can easily tune sites for better search results. Learn more about optimizing your website for search.

Not available to SharePoint Online customers. Word Automation Services enables unattended, server-side conversion of documents that are supported by Microsoft Word. With Word Automation Services, tasks that previously required you to run the Word desktop application can be automated in SharePoint Server 2013.